One of the sights we were most excited to see and kept waiting for throughout our whole trip is Lyme Park, aka Pemberley in BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice ^.^ We've been wanting to see this gorgeous mansion since forever and I still can't believe we came face-to-face with the mansion today!
We booked a bed & breakfast package at our hotel:
so I filled up on a quite proper breakfast this morning in anticipation of our hike through the English countryside to Lyme Hall (2 poached eggs, 2 hash browns, 2 English ham, and lots of scrambled eggs...). I had asked the receptionist last night how to walk to Lyme Hall and she gave me directions, as I guess the main attraction in this area is the Hall (otherwise, why would you spend 1/2 hour driving up the mountain? hehe). Here's the directions she gave me:
What in the heck is a "stile"??? We had to wikipedia it, otherwise we would completely miss the direction points! A stile is a type of bench that you climb over to get to the other side of the fence:
Another stile:
The hike took 1/2 hour, through gravelly roads and sloping uphills and downhills, wooden gates with latches,
a deer farm and sheep grazing on grass...
and Angel singing (her repertoire of the day included Mary Poppins and Sound of Music~ ALL in British accents!!!!):
But eventually we emerged from the woods to see:
We didn't realize we had approached the Hall from the rear-end, and the only entrance is from the front (haha much like Leopoldskron in Salzburg!), because then we had to circle allllll the way around the huge property to get to the front entrance. But later on, we were glad that the first glimpse of Lyme Hall we got was from the back, as this is the famous scene of Mr. Darcy diving into the lake... my favorite scene in all of Pride and Prejudice :)
The front entrance of Lyme Hall:
This is where Mr. Darcy rushed down the stairs to meet Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt and uncle:
We're really glad that we got there 'early'... we thought we were pretty late in waking up and going to breakfast and all that, but apparently people don't get up until MUCH later around here (plus, it's a bank holiday so people probably want to sleep in). By the time we reluctantly left the Hall, there were so many people entering that any picture we wanted to take had people standing all over in it!
Our walk to and from Lyme Hall was through a deer park, lined with trees:
Apparently this lane is named Lime Avenue... but where are the street signs?
We popped by our hotel to pick up our rental car
and drove to Manchester, where Arndale, the biggest mall in Europe is located. I had driven the car yesterday from Manchester Airport to our hotel, 40 minutes away, and my heart was pumping madly the whole time I was driving! My sense of depth perception was completely thrown off but I'm getting the hang of it today and today was a much more smooth and relaxed journey. I just hope to keep it that way!
The mall isn't the main attraction though. It's the streets surrounding the mall, a pedestrian-only street filled with little stalls, of which we bought fudge:
Out of the many fudge flavors, we chose whiskey, hazelnut, coffee, and chocolate vanilla:
I found out after our fudge sampling that pairing coffee and whiskey together is AWESOME. Initially, I ate the whiskey one and it tasted like a strong dry whiskey, and I did not like it at all. But then I ate some coffee fudge and then another bite of the whiskey, and not only was the whiskey flavor substantially enhanced by the coffee, but now it tasted like a sweet malty whiskey. Yum!
We also bought a Pork & Stilton cheese pie, which was really good but would have been even better had it been hot:
Marks & Spencer, Harvey Nichols, and many top luxury brands are located in this area. Marks & Spencer, which I always thought would be very expensive, turned out to be a Target-like store selling their own brand of clothing, food, and household items for reasonable prices.
We also found Tesco, a supermarket chain that had pork pate for 1 pound! We bought it and ate it for dinner with croissants, and it is absolutely delicious! The pate is made from pork liver and pork meat, so it had an incredibly rich creamy taste to it.
Angel found a chocolate MILK MOUSE!
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